2013 Fall Arts Preview

Sydney Dance Company (White Bird) - IMAGE: Alan Pryke

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Theater

Foxfinder

Putting parables onstage is an often iffy endeavor, but
there’s no denying the impact of a successfully staged allegory. British
playwright Dawn King’s Foxfinder, making its U.S. premiere at
Artists Rep, should be just that. A futuristic drama about a
totalitarian government that sends an agent to investigate a mysterious
fox infestation in the English countryside, it’s what Time Out London called a “fascinating dystopian welter of fear, superstition and nature in revolt.” Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison St., 241-1278, artistsrep.org. Oct. 29-Dec. 1. $25-$55.

Song of the Dodo

Portland Experimental Theatre Ensemble
produced one of last season’s most surprising and arresting shows, an
adaptation of Shakespeare’s Richard III. PETE’s next work is a
collaboratively devised piece of dance, theater and song that draws from
texts by ancient Greek playwrights, Samuel Beckett and contemporary
writers. Based on a short video featuring company members tiptoeing
around in frilly white dresses—and another of them squatting and
squawking wildly—it won’t be like anything else you’ll see on a Portland
stage this fall. Studio 2, 810 SE Belmont St., petensemble.org. Nov. 9-24.

The Other Place

Continuing its pattern of producing
challenging work by rising playwrights, Portland Playhouse stages this
haunting psychological drama, which ended its highly lauded Broadway run
in March of this year. Sharr White’s play centers on a
biophysicist-turned-pharmaceutical pitchwoman who begins to show signs
of a breakdown. Gretchen Corbett stars, playing a woman who’s
strong-willed and charismatic—but possibly unreliable. It’s a demanding
job: During the 80-minute show, her character never leaves the stage. Portland Playhouse, 602 NE Prescott St., 488-5822, portlandplayhouse.org. Nov. 13-Dec. 8. $18-$43.Note: This event has been canceled due to an illness in the cast.

Our Town

Last spring, a member of Liminal
Performance Group suggested—as a joke, or maybe a dare—that the company
stage that overproduced mainstay of high-school theater, Our Town.
Despite never having seen a production of Thornton Wilder’s play, John
Berendzen decided to take the proposal seriously, which means the
group’s co-founder and music director is for the first time helming a
play that actually has a script. Liminal emerged from hibernation in
2012 to produce a hybrid installation-performance piece about Gertrude
Stein, and this fall’s Our Town will also be untraditional, but
perhaps not as avant-fucking-garde as many people might expect. The text
will remain intact, but the set will be stripped down, with the actors
onstage for the entire show—they’ll even run technical cues. The Headwaters Theatre, 55 NE Farragut St., No. 9, 567-8309, liminalgroup.org. Nov. 14-Dec. 1.

Noises Off

Third Rail Repertory Theatre produces
provocative and sometimes downright polarizing plays, and its acting
company is one of the city’s best. Those performers deserve a wider
audience, which elevates this winter’s production of Michael Frayn’s
phenomenally funny play from pandering to a wise marketing ploy. Not
only should the backstage comedy—about a regional British production of a
terrible sex farce—be hilarious, but it will hopefully introduce new
audiences to Third Rail. Sure, you could go to The Santaland Diaries for the fifth year in a row—but why? Winningstad Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway, 235-1101, thirdrailrep.org. Dec. 6-Jan. 11.

Comedy

Todd Barry

Though more recognizable to the casual
fan as “the third Conchord,” Barry is a comic’s comic, a veteran standup
with a soft delivery who can read loan documents and make them sound
hilarious. He’s so good, he can even come to a gig without any actual
jokes. For this tour, Barry doesn’t have an act: He’ll work off crowd
interaction alone. So if you’re one of those people who gets nervous
about getting picked on at live comedy shows, it’s a good idea to hide
in the balcony. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave. 8 pm Friday, Sept. 20. $20.

An Evening With Bob and David (and Posehn)

Comedy nerds, please try and contain your boners. Yes,
this is indeed a reunion of Bob Odenkirk and David Cross, the two minds
behind the ’90s cult-favorite sketch series Mr. Show. And yeah,
they have since become more widely known as, respectively, Saul Goodman
and Tobias Funke. And we know there are thousands of famous lines you
want to shout at both of them. But you saw what happened when people did
that to Dave Chappelle last month. This is the comedy event of the
season, certainly, but there’s no need to embarrass yourself. Newmark Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway. 8 pm Saturday, Sept. 28. $47.

Comedy Bang! Bang! Live

In the world of comedy podcasts, Scott
Aukerman is David Letterman to Marc Maron’s Charlie Rose. Where the
latter’s much-praised WTF deconstructs the craft of comedy through sometimes painfully personal conversations, on Comedy Bang! Bang!,
Aukerman prefers to put the craft on display—through in-character
interviews, absurd games and random acts of off-the-cuff zaniness.
Before the premiere of the televised version’s second season on IFC, the
show returns to Portland, with guests including the always-dapper Paul
F. Tompkins and L.A. sketch troupe the Birthday Boys. Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave. 8 pm Tuesday, Oct. 1. $25.

Dance

New Expressive Works

The second capstone performance for a new
residency program at Studio 2 features four local choreographers and a
healthy amount of audience interaction. Perhaps most eye-catching will
be shock queen Kaj-Anne Pepper, who will seat the audience onstage for a
performance that pits drag and contemporary dance against each other.
Keyon Gaskin will explore the five senses, including (somehow) smell.
Danielle Ross will partner with dancer Taka Yamamoto for piece that employs video projection, atmospheric effects, movement and vocalization to explore the various ways we perceive duets.
Allie Hankins rounds out the show with an excerpt from her athletic and
evocative piece The Bravest Bull Welcomes the Fight. Studio 2, 810 SE Belmont St., 221-2518. 8 pm Fridays-Saturdays, Sept. 27-28 and Oct. 4-5. $10 each, $15 for both.

White Bird

The fall lineup for dance presenter White
Bird isn’t as tantalizing as the one for next spring, but the companies
are world-class nonetheless. French Compagnie Maguy Marin is perhaps
the most well-known—and the most controversial: Portland audiences
walked out when it last appeared here in 2002. This show, Salves, should be more palatable, but still challenging. It’s a mix of dance and abstract theater that evokes images of war. Newmark Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway, whitebird.org. 7:30 pm Thursday-Saturday, Oct. 10-12. $26-$64.
A more light-hearted showing is from Sydney Dance Company, Australia’s
leader in contemporary dance. Backed by a flashing LED light show, the
16 dancers in 2 One Another move with both energy and subtlety as they embody the possibilities of human interaction. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway, whitebird.org. 7:30 pm Wednesday, Oct. 23. $26-$64.

The introductory show under new artistic
director Kevin Irving will be a mix of familiar and new. The company is
reviving former artistic director Christopher Stowell’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one of his best works, and pairing it with Nacho Duato’s Por Vos Muero.
Both pieces are contemporary in style and have a fanciful air about
them: Stowell’s features elaborate fairy costumes, while Duato’s paints a
dark, romantic picture of 15th- and 16th-century Spain. The selection
of Duato, a world-renowned choreographer, has Irving’s fingerprints all
over it—the two have close ties, so the piece should offer a taste of
what’s to come. Keller Auditorium, 222 SW Clay St., 248-4335. 7:30 pm
Saturday, Oct. 12; 2 pm Sunday, Oct. 13; and Friday-Saturday, Oct.
18-19. $25-$142.

Joined by new dancer Viktor Usov, the contemporary company presents three new works in its New Now Wow
show. Usov, whom artistic director Sarah Slipper calls a “prodigal
son,” returned to the company after a nearly three-year stint in
Germany. His energy will come in handy for the three works on tap: one
from Danielle Agami, a former member of Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company,
and two from Loni Landon and James Gregg, winners of NWDP’s Pretty
Creatives International Choreographic Competition. Lincoln Hall, Portland State University, 1620 SW Park Ave., 725-3421. 7:30 pm Thursday-Saturday, Oct. 24-26. $25-$39.

Jim McGinn is a fascinating study. He started dancing
late, in his 30s. Now 53, he splits his time between his extracurricular
dance passion and his work as a physicist. In Float, he was
inspired by his time by the ocean—not just by the fluid motion of the
waves, but also by lying on the beach afterwards for hours with
hypothermia. The piece is choreographed to be constantly shifting,
mixing the five-member company in different combinations of duets, trios
and quartets. Conduit Dance, 918 SW Yamhill St., 221-5857. 8:30 pm Friday-Sunday, Nov. 1-3, and Wednesday-Friday, Nov. 6-8. $12-$15.

Classical

Roomful of Teeth

Resonance Ensemble and FearNoMusic team
up to bring one of the country’s hottest new music vocal ensembles to
Portland. Propelled by the surprise success of one of its
members—30-year-old composer, singer and violinist Caroline Shaw, who
this year became the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for
Music—Roomful of Teeth is touring the nation with music from that
award-winning a capella work, Partita for 8 Voices. The ensemble
will also perform works by some of today’s most adventurous—and mostly
Brooklyn-based—young composers, including Judd Greenstein, Missy Mazzoli
and Caleb Burhans. Lewis and Clark College, Agnes Flanagan Chapel, 0615 SW Palatine Hill Road, 957-0055. 7:30 pm Friday, Sept. 20. $11-$35.

“Exotic” is usually a term of opprobrium in classical music, but not in this Scheherezade
program, which features some of the most colorful music ever written
for orchestra. Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s 1888 sym honic
suite beautifully conjures the atmosphere of the Arabian Nights tales.
Another East-meets-West excursion written a century later, 20th-century
Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu’s gently evocative percussion concerto,
From Me Flows What You Call Time, uses unusual instruments, some improvisation, and Japanese influences to musically embody Tibetan Buddhist principles. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway, 228-1353. 7:30 pm Saturday and 8 pm Monday, Sept. 21 and 23. $22-$98.

Some of the most fascinating contemporary
classical music is being written by female composers, as if they’re
making up for the centuries of being denied the opportunity. Likewise,
of the many concerts this Oregon composers group has staged in the past
few years, those devoted to the region’s women composers have been some
of the most entertaining and exploratory. This year’s Crazy Jane Misbehaves
lineup includes music by CC president Jan Mittelstaedt, electronic
musician Susan Alexjander, PSU prof Bonnie Miksch and other talents. Lincoln Hall, Portland State University, 1633 SW Park Ave. 7:30 pm Friday, Nov. 15.

Books

Bill McKibben

Like Al Gore with a personality, author
and environmentalist Bill McKibben has long advocated for action on our
most critical environmental issues. In his new book, Oil and Honey: The Education of an Unlikely Activist,
he describes his involvement in the global climate fight and the need
to come at the problem both on a local scale—such as his partnering with
a Vermont beekeeper—and the larger fight against the fossil fuel
giants. Newmark Theater, 1111 SW Broadway, 248-4335. 7:30 pm Tuesday, Sept. 24. $36 (includes a copy of the book), $20 admission only.

LitHop PDX

Local author, publisher and Powell’s small-press-room
overlord Kevin Sampsell has put together a massive bar hop and book
reading at the upper stretch of Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard between
41st and 51st avenues, where bars run dense. At venues from punk dive
Bar of the Gods to the older-than-school Eagle Lodge, six local
publishing houses and reading series (Tin House, If Not For Kidnap,
etc.) will play host to 52 authors over three hours, including Matthew
Dickman, Lidia Yuknavitch, Pauls Toutonghi and Emily Kendal Frey.
Readings are 15 minutes, and each hour offers a 15-minute break to
switch bars and order drinks. By the end, we expect, all readings are
slurred. Various venues on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard, 7 pm Wednesday, Oct. 2. Free. See lithoppdx.com for details.

Wordstock

Bibliophiles, rejoice! The annual
celebration hosts nearly a week of author readings, book signings, panel
discussions, workshops and more. Notable in this year’s lineup is
author Nicholson Baker, whose subject matter in his fiction and
nonfiction ranges from sexual theme parks to Jiffy Pop to John Updike.
The festival itself spans two days, but related events begin Oct. 1. Oregon
Convention Center, 777 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 235-7575. 10
am-6 pm Saturday-Sunday, Oct. 5-6. $9 a day in advance, $11 a day at the
door. See wordstockfestival.com for a full program.

Malcolm Gladwell

Almost every writer has a niche, whether
sports or history or paranormal erotic fiction. But Malcolm Gladwell
seems to have nestled himself in the not-so-easy-to-accomplish niche of
getting his readers to think—really think—about the world around them. His new book, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants, will be out in October. What a perfect coincidence (or is it?) that he will be speaking in Portland that same month. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway, 248-4335. 7:30 pm Thursday, Oct. 10. $15 and up.

Salman Rushdie

You know you’ve really made it as an
author when one of your books provokes orders for your execution. Salman
Rushdie has published 11 novels, won nearly every major literary award
and been knighted by the Queen. But it was his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses,
that gained him worldwide notoriety and prompted the Ayatollah Khomeini
to issue him a death sentence in 1989. Now for the first time, Rushdie
has released a memoir, Joseph Anton, recounting how he and his family were forced into hiding. Rushdie will appear as part of the Literary Arts lecture series. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway, 248-4335. 7:30 pm, Tuesday, Oct. 8. $75 season subscription required.

Blackmail (The Hitchcock 9)

Film

The Hitchcock 9

Before Alfred Hitchcock made Americans
fear motel showers, the Master of Suspense directed a string of silent
movies in the U.K. in the ’20s. Thanks to a massive project at the
British Film Institute last year, nine of these have been digitally
restored. Highlights include Hitch’s last silent film, the thriller Blackmail (8 pm Saturday, Oct. 12), and The Ring (8 pm Friday, Oct. 18),
about a love triangle between professional prizefighters and a snake
charmer. But the real coup here is the live, original music that will
accompany every screening, courtesy of Reed Wallsmith with Battle Hymns
and Gardens, Three Leg Torso, and Tara Jane O’Neil, among others. NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium, 1219 SW Park Ave., 221-1156. Oct. 12-27. Multiple showtimes. See nwfilm.org for schedule.

Turkish Rambo

Having tackled the Turkish remake of Star Wars,
the creative minds at Filmusik move onto another Turkish adaptation of
classic American cinema. Released in 1983—a time when Turkish audiences
demanded blockbusters but political instability prevented Western movies
from appearing in theaters—Vahşi Kan, Yerli Rambo copies the
Sylvester Stallone movie almost exactly, though it adds bulldozers and,
in an ahead-of-its-time touch, zombies. The script has been translated
into English, to be performed by a cast of local voice-over actors.
They’ll be joined onstage by musicians playing composer Justin Rall’s
original orchestral soundtrack, and by foley artists, who’ll re-create
the sound of each hand grenade and karate chop. Hollywood Theatre,
4122 NE Sandy Blvd., 281-4215. 7 pm Friday-Saturday, Oct. 18-19 and
Wednesday-Saturday, Oct. 23-26. Oct. 18-26.

Visual Arts

Incident Energy, Marne Lucas and Jacob Pander

IMAGE: disjecta.org

Marne Lucas and Jacob Pander

In 1995, Marne Lucas and Jacob Pander collaborated on The Operation,
an erotic art film shot in infrared. It got festival accolades and
became a cult classic. Fast-forward to today, with the pair revisiting
their landmark work with a new infrared project, Incident Energy.
Pander and Lucas are keeping mum on the specifics of their subject
matter, angling to heighten the surprise factor for viewers. But let it
suffice to say the film fulfills their original conception in striking,
dramatic and ultimately poignant ways. Disjecta, 8371 N Interstate Ave., 286-9449. Sept. 20-Oct. 13.

Contemporary Northwest Art Awards

For a Northwest artist, peer recognition
doesn’t get much better than the Contemporary Northwest Art Awards, held
every two years at the Portland Art Museum. From hundreds of nominees,
PAM’s curator of Northwest art, Bonnie Laing-Malcolmson, has chosen only
six finalists to exhibit their work. At the opening-night gala Sept.
21, one will win the $10,000 prize. Check out our coverage of the awards
to find out who wins and whether the show hits or misses its curatorial
mark. Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park Ave., 226-2811. Sept. 21-Jan. 12.

Jacques Flechemuller, God is Invincible

IMAGE: pdxcontemporaryart.com

Jacques Flechemuller

Wit, absurdism and perversity combine in
Jacques Flechemuller’s paintings and drawings. In the past, he’s brought
us a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II carrying one of her prized Corgis—a
work inexplicably titled My Cousin From Eugene. Then there was the charcoal drawing of a dog wearing a cone collar: God Is Invincible.
For his next outing, the artist takes inspiration from French
Neoclassicist Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, whom Flechmuller imagines
sitting next to him in his studio, chiding him onward to greater
technical and thematic risks. This show will almost undoubtedly improve
your mood. And in the nihilistic environs of contemporary art, that’s no
small feat. PDX Contemporary Art, 925 NW Flanders St., 222-0063. Oct. 1-Nov. 2.

Jim Riswold

After Wieden+Kennedy creative director
Jim Riswold was diagnosed with leukemia in 2000, he decided to step down
from that high-profile position to concentrate on two things: getting
better and making art. Thirteen years later, he’s still doing both. His
October show, Art for Oncologists, turns the fearsomeness of
cancer into the stuff of unlikely whimsy. Riswold has created sculptures
of oversized white hearts inscribed with the names of popular
chemotherapy drugs. Coated in glossy resin and painted at an auto-body
shop, they’ll be displayed inside what the artist calls “the world’s
largest candy dish.” Other works will include silkscreens and nude
photographs of his cancer-ravaged body. Rarely do artists, especially
those whose work deals with disease, so skillfully finesse the line
between fear and fabulousness. Augen, 716 NW Davis St., 546-5056. Oct. 3-Nov. 2.

Tom Cramer and Sherrie Wolf

It’s hard to imagine two artists more
different, yet more compatible, than Tom Cramer and Sherrie Wolf. Their
inspired pairing is sure to prove a highlight of the autumn visual-arts
calendar. Cramer’s show, Continuum, will highlight his trippy,
folk art-inspired drawings, as well as the carved relief paintings that
have made him one of the region’s most recognizable artists. Wolf’s Stills,
informed by her expertise in art history, are more intricate and
realist but emanate a lushness of subject matter and paint application
that finds an improbable thematic soulmate in the sensuality of Cramer’s
work. Laura Russo, 805 NW 21st Ave., 226-2754. Oct. 3-Nov. 2.